Health Behaviour Modification Exercise
Part 1
| Day | When | Where | With Whom | Under what circumstances you engage in this behaviour | ||||
| 1 | Monday, 10-1-2012 @ 8.00- 8.20 a.m | My Neighborhood | Alone | Self-efficacy | ||||
| 2 | Tuesday, 10-2-2012 @ 2.00 – 2.20 p.m (Failed) | My Neighborhood | Alone | Self-efficacy | ||||
| 3 | Wednesday 10-3-2012 @ 8.30 – 8.50 a.m | My Neighborhood | Alone | Self-efficacy | ||||
| Part 2 | Modification Stage | Modification Stage | Modification Stage | Modification Stage | ||||
| 4 | Thursday, 10-3-2012 @ 9.00 – 9.30 a.m | My Neighborhood | Alone | Self-monitoring | ||||
| 5 | Friday, 10-4-2012 @ 8.00 – 8.30 a.m | 2 km away from my neighborhood | A group of friends doing aerobics | Modeling | ||||
| 6 | Saturday, 10-5-2012 @10.30 – 10.55 a.m | 2 km away from my neighborhood | A group of friends doing aerobics | Modeling | ||||
| 7 | Sunday, 10-6-2012 @ 2.00 – 2.228 p.m | My neighborhood | A trainer in aerobics | Stimulus Control | ||||
| 8 | Monday 10-7-2012 @ 11.00 – 11.30 a.m | My neighborhood | A trainer in aerobics | Stimulus Control | ||||
| 9 | Tuesday, 10-8-2012 @ 4.00 – 4.33 p.m | My Neighborhood | Alone | Self-Reinforcement | ||||
| 10 | Wednesday, 10-9-2012 @ 8.30 – 8.50 a.m | My Neighborhood | Alone | Self- Reinforcement | ||||
Part 3
My health behavior was aerobics (jogging). Aerobics is health behavior since it has a wide range of health benefits concerning health sustenance both physically and emotionally. Research indicates that aerobics stimulate and strengthen the heart and the lungs, improving usage of oxygen by the body system (pg 78). According to health practitioners, some minutes of jogging (exercise) reduce the risk of several chronic illnesses that include heart disease and some cancers. Exercise can work as a positive stimulus towards quitting of unhealthy behavior like drug and substance use. For instance, when a smoker who approximately smokes 20 cigarettes daily engages himself in exercise like aerobics, he ends up reducing the number of cigarettes. This is because he will spend some time jogging instead of smoking and this can work towards quitting smoking ultimately.
Aerobics as well increase the efficiency of the cardio- respiratory system, improve physical work capacity, optimization of body weight, sustenance of muscle tone and strength, and increased soft tissue and joint flexibility among other health benefits (pg 78). All these benefits result into avoidance of numerous ailments and chronic diseases, which in turn is a healthy experience.
For the purpose of my health behavior change, I used self-efficacy to work towards my exercises. In this case, I had an inner drive that my health behavior should change so that I could avoid some unhealthy practices like smoking. Self-efficacy is a crucial determinant of healthy behaviors. An individual may control the practice of a definite behavior (pg 56). Taking for instance an individual who smokes and believes that he will not break this habit possibly, he will not attempt quitting the behavior. This is regardless of the number of times they can imagine that smoking is a risk venture and stopping the same is imperative. In the same way, self-efficacy works towards behavior change in a wide range of ways, including exercise in which case I considered aerobics. In general, research establishes a strong link between perception of self-efficacy and both initial behavior changer and long-term sustenance of the change (pg 56).
The final implication in self-efficacy is that, ways vary among individuals for undertaking various health behavior changes (pg 56). This may include the magnitude of a health threat, the level of belief that this person holds as being susceptible to the health threat, the degree at which the individual believes he can reduce the vulnerability to the threat, which is self-efficacy, and the degree to which the specific health measure advocated is efficient, desirable and easy to carry out. I decided on self-efficacy since I believed that having that inner motive to change my health would sustain me in the carrying out exercises for a long time. This would help keep fit health behavior against all dangers of chronic illnesses.
During the period of jogging as my form of health exercise, I noticed that a wide range of external factors were both helpful and detrimental towards my aerobics. There were situational circumstances that made me fail to attend the exercise especially on day two of aerobics. This resulted from pain after having started the previous day. The body could not act in response to the beginning of a new work out. Life stressors made me move on with my aerobics. This was evident on the third day when I had a feeling of stress and self-pity. I had to exercises the next day to keep stress out of my life.
Apart from the external factors, there were internal factors that I believe hindered me from practicing my aerobics. I felt like I lost a sense of self-control when the next day I yielded to my pain. I also had other health issues diabetes that could not allow me to keep up with the pressure of long exercises. There are times I had to go for less than 20 minutes, which was against my initial budgeted time for aerobics.
To keep up with my exercises, I decided to introduce modification activities for my health behavior change. In the first place, I used the Self-monitoring technique of the cognitive behavior therapy (pg 59). In this case, I sought to understand the dimensions of my aerobics. This included assessment of my target behavior of doing aerobics for health purposes, the antecedents and results of the behavior. I learnt how to discriminate my target behavior. Given the short period of observation, there was no need to chart my behavior during self-monitoring. I only kept in mind circumstances in which I avoided going for my exercises. I felt guilty for the second day when I did not engage in aerobics. This gave me an inner drive to move on with the exercise since I knew that it was the way forward to attaining behavior change. At this stage, self-efficacy moved in as I picked up my exercises again on the third day.
During the self-monitoring processes, I established some of the hindrances towards my aerobics. First, I was carrying out this activity alone within the neighborhood. This reduced my self-esteem since I found no reason to go on doing something on my own. The other issue was the lack of appropriate facilities within my neighborhood for efficient practice in aerobics. I needed somewhere more appealing and conducive to continue with my exercises (pg 59). I also required moral support from friends and other peers in doing aerobics. This led me to the next stage of modifying my behavior change. I embraced modeling.
Modeling in this case is learning by way of witnessing other people carrying out a behavior change (pg 61). It was imperative to move out of my neighborhood and look for a convenient group of people carrying out the same exercise. As a result, I started doing my Aerobics two kilometers away from my neighborhood. I needed a challenge from other people, and I was capable of doing the exercise. One vital advantage about modeling is that I could see myself able to carry out the same exercise since the rest of the group was performing the same. Just as peers can influence an individual to engage in risky behaviors like smoking and drugs, a group of friends that engaged in aerobics gave me a challenge. This positive motivation instilled the operant conditioning in me (pg 61). After engaging in aerobics with friends for two days, I realized that the behavior change had become part of my daily activities. I realized that modeling is a long-term technique of behavior change. In the event of carrying out a self-help program especially for individuals addicted to drugs, this program changes the negative behavior.
If an individual engaged in unacceptable behavior sees his peers doing the right thing, he will behave like them so that he fits in the group. Along the way, a person finds out that he has gotten rid of the unhealthy behavior. After realizing that I could do aerobics for the consecutive two days, I needed something new to keep going without the risk of monotony. This led me into stimulus control as a means of modifying health behavior change.
In the same way, stimulus control required that I understand the antecedents of my aerobics. I decided to keep off from negative stimuli that triggered sluggishness in me to miss exercises and created new stimuli (pg 62). In the process of creating a new stimulus and at the same time avoid monotony; I sought for a trainer in aerobic. This resulted into taking my exercises back in my neighborhood to avoid any chances of excuses resulting from distance. The trainer gave me moral support as well as physically engaged me to keep time in doing my aerobics. This also took two days and realized that I was consistent. This marked the success towards my health behavior change.
After the exercise, I noticed that there was an improvement in the health behavior change. I decided to carry out self-reinforcement is a technique of continuously rewarding oneself to increase the occurrence of the target behavior change (pg 63). Since I had been successful in my modification process, I had to reward myself positively. I decided to go to a movie the next day after my training. This served therapeutically to relax my muscles and change events. I noticed that monotony was the biggest problem that could hinder an individual from continuous practices of the health behavior change. As much as possible, I tried to avoid monotony. I achieved this through constant change of settings and activities (pg 63). The self-reinforcement stage was also within my neighborhood. Research indicates that self-reinforcement, as a technique of behavior modification is efficient especially because of triggering intrinsic advantages. In this case, I did not need change agents like a physiotherapist to monitor my behavior change and reinforcement.
Given a chance in the future to carry out health behavior change, I will incorporate relaxation training. In this health behavior change, a psychotherapist is crucial. He involves a patient or client in training to substitute relaxation in the event of circumstances that trigger anxiety (pg 65). This process involves a successive breath taking activity and progressive muscle relaxation. During breath taking, an individual should take deep, controlled breaths that produce a variety physiological alteration. This may include decreased heart beat rate and blood pressure as well as increased oxygenation in blood. During times of relaxation, it is possible for people to engage in unnoticed deep breaths. On the other hand, progressive muscle relaxation requires that a person learn how to relax all his muscles in the body system to reduce tension. Relaxation training will serve well in the event of practicing a healthy living process like avoidance of chronic heart diseases and stress.
The assessment has been progressive in the presentation of health modification exercise. The focus was on aerobics (jogging), and a coding sheet preparation was an indication of activity performance for ten days to change behavior. Some of the activities discussed as measures of health behavior change include self-efficacy, self-monitoring, modeling, stimulus control and ultimately the self-reinforcement technique. The paper also offered the rationale behind choosing these techniques as either methods for initiating behavior change or modifying behavior change. The final stage of this article has proposed a future event that I may undertake when provided with an opportunity to engage in health behavior change. A clear point to the relaxation training is significant since there is involvement of a psychotherapist to monitor and control the behavior change.
